Big Decisions and the Last Responsible Moment

As your leadership span-of-control grows so does the impact of your decisions. For that reason it’s important to develop a good decision making process for you and your team.

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Leadership Tools: Make big decision at the last responsible moment.

If the decision is obvious with plenty of history showing it’s the right decision for you then you should do one of three things in the following order:  

  1. Identify if there are others on your team that could easily make this decision.  If yes then have them make it to develop the team. 
  2. Identify if there are others on your team that will struggle with this decision could with help.  If yes then coach them through the process and have them make the decision to develop the team.  
  3. If 1 & 2 don’t apply then make it and move on.

For other more complicated and highly leveraged decisions with no clear right or wrong:

  1. Set a decision timeline and communicate it to those involved so they don’t think it is procrastination for the sake of procrastination.  Know the last possible moment you can make the decision where the advantage of waiting reaches a point of diminishing returns. 
  2. Identify sources of additional information including advisory services to help provide you more situational awareness
  3. Don’t over-analyze which will lead to more confidence than competency in your decision.  
  4. When you do decide be decisive and execute with discipline.
  5. Don’t start “Resulting” regardless of the outcome.



Two Planning Dimensions
Some of the impacts you see on a project are not as clear as a design change, conflict, or obviously changed condition. Some impacts, such as poor project sequencing or congested work areas are hard to notice if you don’t have good tracking systems.
Levels of Productivity
Making major improvements to labor productivity for contractors starts at the company level and must be rigorously managed all the way down to the individual steps in each task.
Cash Flow and the 5Cs of Credit - Capital
The 2nd of the 5Cs of Credit is how much capital you are putting at risk, along with your financial partner. Contractors should design and follow their own capital management policies appropriate for their business.